Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Just with respect to the budget of the Legislative Assembly. I'd like to thank my colleagues because it's an honour for me to sit on the Board of Management and undertake looking at the Legislative Assembly budget and goings on and understanding a little bit in depth as to how the Assembly works as a whole, how we keep our buildings and administration systems going.
I think by far this particular year, or within the last six months, the biggest issue that we had, of course, was getting our message out to the public: the loss of programming into a former contractor that was providing TV, or providing our Legislature on TV to each and all the communities. It was something that, believe it or not, people took quite public. Going back home the last couple of times in the last couple of weeks, people are saying, hey, we've been looking for you on TV, you're not there. I know that you guys are in session, we hear you on the radio. I guess our challenge is, I know that we lost that one channel that we're normally on, but now we're going to be on, we're trying to find an alternate solution. Mr. Speaker has mentioned it in his opening remarks about the loss of coverage by APTN.
At the same time, I kind of like his comments, too, that here's an opportunity to build a better communication strategy for the Legislative Assembly to bring to the kitchens of all our people in the North and now's the time to be deliberating it. I know that our staff is working hard on finding alternative solutions. Also, there's interjurisdictional negotiations and considerations, as well, because it's the other northern jurisdictions, like the Yukon and Nunavut, who have the exact same issues that we have with regard to providing our legislatures viewing into the communities, and in official languages, as well.
So I would favour investing in some kind of new northern network that can provide our Legislature to all the people. Because over the years, our elders and community members and constituents have all grown accustomed to turning on the TV at a certain time and knowing that they can watch their MLA either in English or the language of their choice. That was a huge build-up of steady watchers and it's a form of participatory democracy, too.
You know, like, Yellowknife MLAs are lucky because their constituents get to continue to watch them live on TV and catch current issues and provide them feedback, current feedback, as well. It's something that I, as a regional MLA, I feel saddened that the people that I represent get a delayed...even some of them aren't getting it on the TV. I believe they're getting it on the radio, but they're not seeing it on TV in some of the very small communities, like Trout Lake, and Nahanni, and Wrigley, and Jean Marie. But it's something that being a small northern territory, then they used to participate and see it all the time. They knew all the issues and it was great. I would go visit them and have a tea and we would talk about issues that interested them that they saw in the Legislature, be it on housing or economic development or even some of the current issues in Tuktoyaktuk. But it interested them and they saw that, and I'm not too sure what kind of continued feedback I'll get now, but we'll see. I'll make my tours and get some feedback for our next sitting in the May/June session.
Hopefully, too, by then, I know our staff and Mr. Speaker is working hard on coming up with alternate solutions and hopefully you'll have something firm by then so the other small communities can see it on their local channels. But that remains to be seen. I know that setting up a new northern network will be like any other project. It will be, I wouldn't want to say cost prohibitive, but the start-up costs will be huge. But that's something I'm prepared to support and speak in favour of, if and when the time comes.
Another thing that's of great interest to myself and to the constituents and students, much like the crowd that raised their own money to come visit us here today. During recognition of people in the gallery, I recognized the Grade 6 class up there. Mr. Chairman, they're at that age that they're at the Page age level, I guess I would say; Page age. Whereas, next year in Grade 7 they'll be eligible to come and participate as a Page. I believe it's a fun thing to do. I've had four this year. In fact, I had to pay the cost of two extra Pages this year for myself because the interest and the uptake was there and I didn't want to constrain students from not participating.
So I had no problem providing that service and it goes a long way because, believe it or not, in the smaller communities people are saying, well, I didn't know we had a program like that. I didn't know we had the opportunity to travel or participate. Where was this when I was growing up? But the Page program has been something that I believe we've had in the Legislature for a very, very long time, but it just wasn't used for whatever reason. But I'm finding that the uptake is getting more and more. In fact, in the springtime, I had students from Fort Liard and they enjoyed that immensely, Mr. Chairman. It's something that I'd like to continue in the new year and I'm glad to see that we will be budgeting four per year starting in the new year. I look forward to participating in that and allowing more and more students to come to our Legislature and see how it works.
The new initiative put forward by Mr. Speaker's office about the mace program, or travel with the mace to promote the importance of public government, I think that's huge. It's just one of those things; hey, great idea,
why didn't we do it before? But I'm very supportive of it and I think our Speaker should travel and get out there and let our students know a bit more about participatory democracy. I myself, as an MLA, when I travel to the communities, I like to get into the schools and talk to the students. The more and more they see about our government, the more and more interest they'll have as adults and utilize our public government system and understand and know how it can work for their favour. Because there comes a time in each person's life when we have to lobby government for a particular issue that we're passionate about, and once you know how it works, at least you know what the next steps are. So I would champion the mace program and get more knowledge about our Legislative Assembly. The more knowledge about how it works out into the communities.
So with that, Mr. Chairman, I'll end my comments. Mahsi cho.